A closer look at where we are

Through the looking glass – darkly.

by Richard @ Flexible Reality – Oct 31st, 2017

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We always knew there was a significant undercurrent of racism, white exceptionalism, xenophobic nationalism, economic resentment, and distaste “for elites” in America; but we never imagined the group was that large, or that they would coalesce behind a carny like Trump.

If one subtracts out what appears outright contradictions: evangelicals supporting a guy who is the polar opposite of Jesus; poor whites supporting a self-described billionaire; white women supporting a sexual predator; sanctimonious capitalists supporting a guy who stiffs people who work for him, and who creates fake enterprises which go bankrupt; or party politicians who support him even after he personally insults them and their families – after all that, one is left with only one over-riding ideology that binds them to him: adherence to white, Christian, vulture Capitalist, American, male hegemony in every aspect of society. Nothing else really matters to his supporters.

Worse still, there is no conceivable avenue of dialog with these people: as he has co-opted every viable agency we relied on in the past to confront sociopaths like him. The Media, the Church, the Business Community, the Arts, Television, Congress, and International Organizations cannot penetrate the literal and figurative wall surrounding this guy and his ideology.

At least in the Scandinavian countries, the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and to a lesser degree France, Austria, some South American and Central European countries, the Commons in these countries has been able to mitigate the venom which spews from their own right-wing nationalists. Not so here.

Out of a voting population of 200M, we currently have over 60M who approve of his performance in office. After nine months in office his approval went from 87% to 80% among Republicans, and from 13% to 7% among Democrats and Independents.

In the 2016 campaign, Trump spent $958M, Clinton $1.4Bn; but if he can hold onto 60M supporters, he can certainly spend several hundred million to buy another 10 million supporters for the 2020 General Election.

If the judiciary, bad health, or an assassin doesn’t take him down, I am afraid we are cursed with him for years.

But the weather outside today was delightful, I went to town with Judy for a “day trip”, came home, and walked my dog, before having an apple mini-pie with ice cream, and composing this letter.

We’ll get through this. I am beginning to favor the approach George Carlin suggested: “be a spectator, not a participant”…the former gets to depend on themselves, the latter is subject to conditions imposed by others.